


the only hoax i believe in

by taizi



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Depression, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Families of Choice, Friendship/Love, Gen, Healing, M/M, Platonic Relationships, Sharing a Bed, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:47:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27336643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/taizi/pseuds/taizi
Summary: “Sammy,” Ben says. “You gotta eat.”Sammy opens his eyes. He isn’t hungry, but he pushes himself upright anyway.“You better not have tried cooking again,” he says, aiming for light-hearted, angling for a smile.He nails it. Ben’s eyes go bright and he scoots off the bed with a grin. Not so much fooled as willing to play along, grateful for the semblance of normalcy.Fake it till you break it,Sammy thinks with the same grim determination that got him through all of high school, and all of college, and every second of every miserable day without Jack and before Ben.He gets out of bed.
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens, Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 11
Kudos: 64





	the only hoax i believe in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GibbousLunation](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GibbousLunation/gifts).



> a birthday gift for my dearest lin, who is the ben to my sammy and one of my all-time fave people on the planet (ˊᵕˋ)♡ i hope your day is all that u deserve and more !
> 
> ~~ik it's a little early but i couldn't wait~~

The mattress gives a little, tired springs dipping under a new weight. Sammy doesn’t turn his head or open his eyes but it doesn’t discourage Ben from worming in closer. His head settles on Sammy’s pillow. He’s still cold from being outside, the crisp winter air clinging to his skin and hair. 

He doesn’t say “come on, you’ve been in bed all day.” He doesn’t say “have you even moved since I left?” He doesn’t say “you’ve got to take care of yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.”

He says, “It’s time for supper.”

Sammy nods without lifting his head. Even with the January chill Ben brought with him, the bed is warmer between the two of them. Sammy wants to lay here a little longer. Ben allows it for awhile, digging into his pocket for his phone, catching Sammy up on the station and their friends. His voice is unsubdued, rising and falling in inexorable waves that fill the room. 

Eventually he puts the phone and conversation away in favor of combing the hair out of Sammy’s face with his fingers, the touch at once perfunctory and affectionate. 

“Sammy,” Ben says. “You gotta eat.”

Sammy opens his eyes. He isn’t hungry, but he pushes himself upright anyway. 

“You better not have tried cooking again,” he says, aiming for light-hearted, angling for a smile. 

He nails it. Ben’s eyes go bright and he scoots off the bed with a grin. Not so much fooled as willing to play along, grateful for the semblance of normalcy. 

_Fake it till you break it,_ Sammy thinks with the same grim determination that got him through all of high school, and all of college, and every second of every miserable day without Jack and before Ben. 

He gets out of bed. 

* * *

It’s a tightrope walk. 

Sammy hasn’t slept more than a couple hours a night in weeks. His head feels like concrete, and he keeps drifting away mid-conversation before coming back with a start, and all he wants to do is crawl back into bed. 

But Ben is a constant, steady presence. Emily is quietly understanding in a way Sammy wishes she wasn’t. Lily seems to bite her tongue around him these days. Troy and Ron and Mary and Herschel and _everybody_ can probably see how bone-tired he is, but they don’t let him go idle. Whether it’s Emily coaxing him to help her shelve books at the library, or Ron coming around to kidnap him for an afternoon of inventory at the tackle shop, or Mary asking him to babysit for the evening, Sammy’s days are full. They’re not allowed to be empty. 

They’re not his days, really. He’s living on borrowed time. He only still exists because of outside forces. This is someone else’s future. Left to his own devices, Sammy would have been long gone by now. 

So it’s easier to let them take the choices out of his hands. It’s easier to be given direction, to be given clear and concise guidelines, and only have to worry about meeting them.

And when he starts to waver, when his head hurts and his bones feel brittle and it feels like the hardest thing in the world just to keep breathing, Sammy wields that vicious Shotgun stubbornness like a weapon and forces himself to relive the night at the auditorium. Ben, crying on the air. His friends’ pale, terrified faces. The rainbow lights, and how Sammy realized a second too late that he actually didn’t want to die. How he realized right there at the end that he wanted to stay.

 _You’ve done enough damage,_ he tells himself viciously. _For once in your goddamn life, do some good._

So he soldiers through every hour, every minute, every excruciating second. It’s still hard, and he still can’t sleep, and part of him still wants to just lay down somewhere and surrender this burden—but there are moments when he doesn’t have to white-knuckle it and grit his teeth. 

When Ben comes and finds him in the morning, crawling into his bed and talking with him until getting up feels like something Sammy can physically do. When Lily shoves Sammy’s legs off the sofa and sits next to him, their shoulders bumping as she dumps her computer on his lap and tells him to proofread her notes. When Troy’s large hands guide him away from the closed door he almost walked into, or the steps he didn’t notice in front of him, gentle and implacable and as strong as Sammy needs them to be. When Emily lays her head on his shoulder, and the weight of her and the warmth of her and the smell of her shampoo is so familiar it settles Sammy’s restless, anxious heart. 

These brief, painless moments that make him think it was worth waking up today. It might be worth waking up tomorrow, too. 

At some point, when Sammy isn’t looking, the tightrope becomes a narrow path. If he slips he’s only going to take a short tumble, he isn’t going to fall.

He doesn’t have to cling so hard to survival. He stops gritting his teeth. 

* * *

Ben comes into the kitchen full-speed, a little wild in the eyes, and skids to a dead stop when he sees Sammy in front of the stove. 

“Morning,” Sammy says, his voice hoarse. “There’s coffee.”

“Morning,” Ben parrots back. He’s standing in the doorway as though he’s facing a skittish animal, and any sudden move might send it darting back into the cover of brush, or behind a closed bedroom door. He moves his hands in an abrupt, aborted gesture, and then drops them by his sides. “Um. You weren’t in your room.”

“Yeah. I had a craving,” Sammy confesses, somewhat embarrassed. “Monte Cristos?”

Ben is staring at him. He ventures into the kitchen, looking over Sammy’s arm at the skillet, where the sandwiches are browning, and then over at the counter, where the ham and cheese and eggs are sitting out. 

“We had all this in the fridge?” he asks. 

“Uh, no. I couldn’t sleep, so I went to the store last night,” Sammy says. Ben jerks back a little to look up at him, and Sammy knows why, so he adds, “I texted Troy. He was up already, so he came with.”

His friends don’t really trust him to go out on his own any more, and he can’t blame them. He doesn’t trust himself most of the time. Some nights are harder than others. It’s so much easier to feel lonely when you’re alone. 

Ben nods. He’s tugging at the hem of the hoodie he fell asleep in. His hair is an unfortunate riot of curls. 

“Okay. Okay! Great! This looks great, Sammy! I think you made these once before? Remember? Last time we had a poker night and you had to teach me and Troy how to play poker.” He’s rambling, moving around Sammy to get plates and mugs out of the cabinet. “We were so hungover in the morning and you made these for breakfast and I think one of us proposed to you.”

Sammy smiles. He remembers. “You both did. Only Troy took it back.”

“I stood by it then and I stand by it now,” Ben announces, only his voice goes all wrong, all thick and wobbly, and Sammy turns around to find him crying at the kitchen table. 

“Ben,” Sammy says, alarmed, already sliding the skillet off the burner and fully abandoning breakfast. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

As soon as Sammy is within arms reach, Ben is crowding into him for a hug. His octopus arms latch tight around Sammy’s middle, and his wet face is buried against Sammy’s collar, and he sobs the way he hasn’t since the night Sammy tried to kill himself. 

It hurts. It peels away the lingering gray and fog and it hurts with a clarity that takes Sammy by complete surprise. 

“If I knew you liked them this much, I would have made them more often,” he says with a lightness he doesn’t feel. He tucks Ben under his chin and holds him there. 

Ben’s hands tighten on his shirt, and he presses impossibly closer, and breakfast has long gone cold by the time they get around to eating it. Ben still maintains that it’s the best meal he’s ever had. They go grocery shopping that afternoon, and Sammy starts setting his alarm. 

A week after that, he goes back to work. 

It gets easier. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


When Sammy reaches into the Void this time, it’s with his feet on solid ground, and Emily’s arms around his waist, and Lily and Ben on either side of him, their hands reaching right next to his. 

And this time, someone else reaches back. 

It’s impossible that the shape of a hand could be so familiar, but Sammy knows it. He knows those fingers, that palm—that handprint might as well be seared into his fucking soul. In the inky depth of nothingness, a hand closes around Sammy’s, and then Lily and Ben’s hands close around them both, and then they’re pulling with all their might, heaving back from the hole they tore into the fabric of reality itself, fighting tooth and nail against an impossible, unknowable force, and then suddenly…. 

The resistance snaps. They’re tumbling back, falling down hard. The hole is gone, and the Void is gone, and Jack is here. 

Everyone is talking all at once. Time seems to stall and start again in fits and bursts, like a car engine struggling to turn over. Jack is heavy against Sammy’s chest. Lily’s arms are around them both. Emily is on her phone. It’s glowing brightly in the semi-dark of Perdition Woods at dusk. The call is on speaker but the sound is tinny and far away to Sammy’s ears. Ben is bounding away toward the dirt road, waving his arms at the approaching lights and sirens of Troy’s truck. There’s a whole convoy coming out to meet them. There are hands guiding Sammy to his feet, steering him toward the open door of a car.

All of it barely registers, because Sammy’s sole focus is on the man they pulled out of the dark. 

Jack is here. He’s whole and breathing in Sammy’s arms, trembling with cold, eyes fluttering as if he’s fighting sleep. There’s white in his hair that doesn’t belong there, but otherwise he hasn’t aged a day in six years. He clutches Sammy with all the desperation of a drowning man suddenly thrown a life preserver. He tilts toward Lily every time she speaks. 

He knows them. He’s alive. 

He’s here. 

  
  


* * *

Jack knows what Sammy tried to do that night, over a year ago. He doesn’t ever come out and talk about it, but sometimes his eyes are heavy with regret when he looks at Sammy. Sometimes Jack touches him so gently, like he’s afraid he might tear through Sammy’s skin if he isn’t careful. 

Sammy tries to apologize, a choking, awful thing. They aren’t alone in the apartment; the girls are in the kitchen, and the living room isn’t big enough to give even the polite illusion that they’re too far away to overhear. But Sammy has been stripped bare before these people so many times that he can’t bring himself to care about something like privacy now. 

He’s thinking about Jack, eaten by the Void and somehow managing to keep it from eating Sammy, too. About Ben, crying during Sammy’s fumbling goodbyes, begging him not to do this, promising that it would be okay if he would just come home. About Troy, white-faced and trembling as he helped Sammy crawl out of his car. About Lily, refusing to speak to him even as she refused to let go of his hand. About Emily, who put her head on his shoulder and _understood._

He says he’s sorry. He says he would do it all differently if he could. He says he wishes he was easier to love.

“Remember when my OCD was so bad I would make you turn the car around and drive forty minutes back across town so I could make sure the front door was locked?” Jack says suddenly. “You never complained about that, even when I was being a stubborn idiot about therapy. You bought that little pet cam and set it up in the living room, so I could just check my phone the next time I needed to make sure the door was shut. You helped me with brain hacks like that all the time. You tried to clear the history before I used the computer, but I know how much time you spent reading up on how to make my disorder a little less painful.”

Ben scoots closer, eyes round and earnest. Seeing him and Jack together never stops sending a painful, glad jolt straight through Sammy’s chest. 

“When a psychotic robot showed up here looking for the book, you held the door and told me to run. When we had that angry shapeshifter in our studio, you wanted me to get out while you stayed behind to distract it. You got into a fight with actual mobster Ernie Salcedo _live on the air_ because he threatened your family! You’re always looking after me, Sammy, me and everybody else. It’s our turn to hold the door.”

“Being easy to love has nothing to do with it,” Jack says. He sounds so certain.

He reaches out and touches Sammy again, very gently. His fingers trace the line of Sammy’s jaw, his thumb stroking the bruises insomnia left beneath Sammy’s eyes. 

It’s less as though he’s worried about breaking him, Sammy realizes, and more as though he refuses to take for granted the luxury of touching him at all. 

Now it’s Jack’s turn to drive Sammy to therapy every other week. He and Ben wait in the lobby for him. They never have anything else to do. They go to Rose’s afterwards, and Sammy will want to talk about it or he won’t, but they’re there either way. And he does get better. 

The depression is something he lives with now, a house guest who never fully goes away. But it’s small and quiet, and gets smaller and quieter every day, and it never manages to talk over him again. 

* * *

It’s early enough that the room has begun shifting into tones of gray, pre-dawn creeping inexorably through the cracks in the window shades. Jack is warm and heavy against Sammy’s chest. The bedroom door eases open on quiet hinges. 

Ben peeks into the room, looking like he just tumbled out of bed a second ago. 

“Bad dream?” Sammy asks quietly. 

“No, but it’s weird sleeping in an empty bed,” Ben mumbles. Emily is out of state for the weekend, visiting family with her mother, and Ben is handling it about as well as Ben possibly could. “Can I—?”

Sammy can’t help but smile at him. This is the first time Ben has ever asked this particular permission. Probably because Jack is deeply asleep, and the half-dark of the room makes it harder for him to see Sammy’s face and communicate with him in one of those brief, speaking glances they’re prone to. 

The silent language of radio co-hosts, evolved into the silent language of best friends.

“Plenty of room,” Sammy assures him. “You know that.”

Ben beams. It puts the brightening dawn to shame. He climbs onto the bed on Sammy’s side, worming shamelessly to make room for himself and tugging a corner of the blankets free. 

Jack makes a noise as if he’s close to waking, but Sammy presses a kiss to his forehead, and it soothes him back into an uninterrupted sleep. 

With a quiet sigh, Ben finally settles. He’s clustered against Sammy’s back under the duvet, one arm tossed over Sammy’s middle, face smushed against the nape of his neck.

“Thanks Sammy,” Ben murmurs, half-dreaming already. “Love you.”

The sun is reaching through the window insistently now, filling the room with a warm golden glow. Sammy’s going to get up in a little while to cook. Monte Cristos, with ham and provolone. Jack’s favorite. Ben’s, too. Lily will complain about all the butter and then eat two. Unless Emily’s flight is delayed, she’ll be home in time to have breakfast with them, her sweet smile a welcome sight after three days without her. 

The kitchen will be full and busy. The dishes will be a mess. Someone will dig out a bottle of bottom shelf champagne and insist on mimosas. Their landlord, who lives on the first floor, will give them the fisheye when they finally leave for the day, but he won’t say anything about all the noise. 

None of them have to work—it’s a local holiday. Kingsie’s birthday, and Ron is throwing a party for her, whatever _that_ entails. It seems a little bit like he’s just fishing for an excuse to have a party. He wants everybody at the Bait & Tackle by noon. Jack is thrilled at the prospect of potentially catching a glimpse of the lake monster, and it’s all he and Ben have been talking about for the last week. 

Sammy won’t give them the satisfaction of admitting it, but he’s looking forward to it, too. 

He’s looking forward to all of it. 

“Love you, too,” he says.


End file.
